


Endling

by wretched__abyss



Category: Sonic the Hedgehog - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Multi, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-15 09:53:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14788262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wretched__abyss/pseuds/wretched__abyss
Summary: Shadow has always struggled with mortality. The extent of life, and death, andhislife all weigh on him.





	Endling

Shadow couldn’t help but notice that Sonic’s legs were covered in neon colored band-aids, so many that one might’ve thought they were deliberate accessories to his gaudy, worn out windbreaker. But Shadow could smell the scabs protected by the rainbow-colored strips, and he knew if the band-aids weren’t there Sonic would pick at old wounds. The two of them were basking in the rays of the sun beneath a pine tree, Sonic beside Shadow with his hands resting under his quills. Shadow instead opted for sitting up and plucking blades of grass beside him. 

“There aren’t a lot of hedgehogs around,” Shadow murmured, only half-watching the clouds pass overhead. He was more interested in the blue sky between the pillowy white shapes.

Sonic hummed, bouncing his leg. “Guess not.”

“Does that bother you?” 

Sonic shrugged, and Shadow watched his eyelids droop lazily. “Not really.”

Shadow sighed through his nose, shoulders sagging a little as he brought his knees up to his chest. He closed his eyes and tried to focus on the feeling of the sun on his skin, worming through his quills and fur. What would it be like to travel beyond the ozone and bask in the unfiltered rays of the sun? Would it hurt? Or would the pain be too great to process?

“You good, babe? You seem kinda...” Sonic made a vague motion with his hand, concern heavy in his voice. 

Instead of an answer, he just shrugged. He hadn’t actually heard what Sonic said; his thoughts had turned towards the stars and the home he had there once. He remembered a voice piercing through the cosmos, constantly whispering to him since he was born. He remembered the moment he silenced that voice—how empty he felt, watching his father’s body crumple as the first true silence he’d ever known enveloped him. 

Sonic sat up. The material in his windbreaker rustled a bit with the movement, and yet he was uncharacteristically still. Shadow knew he was trying to read him—despite all their time together, he couldn’t tell the subtle differences in Shadow’s expressions, much less react appropriately. At a loss, he simply rested his head on his shoulder and wrapped his arms around him. 

“I love you.” 

As if the touch had given him a static shock, Shadow stiffened under the embrace. Still, he sighed and let himself relax. “...Thanks,” he replied, stilted and awkward, “I love you too.”

~~~

The dumb cane—Shadow had figured out why they called it that when he had tasted it out of curiosity—had gotten a bit bigger since Rouge had brought it in. It had been a gift for Shadow; she had said that it would be better for him for have some sort of routine instead of sitting around all day in her condo, and a plant was perfect for that. That was before he was more sociable, but he still took ritualistic care of the cane. Around noon he would open the blinds to let the sun in and sprinkle some water into the pot. While the progress was imperceptible, it made a bit of pride blossom in his chest when he realized that the plant had grown rather than withered at his touch. He was running his fingers along the leaves, admiring his handiwork as Rouge came in. 

“Still kicking, huh?”

“Me or the plant?” came the flat reply.

“The plant, moron. You survived at least two crash landings from space. You’ll be kicking until the end of time,” Rouge laughed.

He smiled, but it didn’t linger long. She was right, is the thing; he’d been designed to be practically immortal, with all that came with it, and a multitude of other genetic modifications to spare. Whatever was necessary to ensure he could survive anywhere, any _thing _. It wouldn’t surprise him if he wasn’t supposed to age, either. He would know for sure in many years, when everyone he had come to care for would grow old. He would either join them or be the same he always had been.__

____

____

If his friends didn’t all die young, of course. 

(Closure had always seemed to evade him.)

“You’ve been distant lately.” Rouge’s observation, strangely worried, managed to snap him out of his reverie. “More than usual, at least. Is everything alright?”

“Yes,” he answered, a little too biting.

Rouge sighed. As Shadow knew her, exasperation seemed to be nearly as frequent as stealing. “You know, I could try to sort things out for you if you wanted me to.”

“I’m alright,” he said, “I can handle it on my own.”

Rouge opened her mouth to reply, but simply sighed instead, letting the issue drop for now. He knew she’d bring it up again, but for now, he had a plant to water.

~~~

If Shadow closed his eyes, he could pretend he was floating weightlessly in space. He just had to ignore the water lapping into his ears, the smell of chlorine, and the sound of rustling leaves, and a thousand thousand other stimuli, all threatening to bring him back from orbit. If he tried his hardest to block it all out, he could see stars behind his eyelids, feel the frost gathering on his quills. If he focused, he could almost remember what those alien murmurs sounded like. It was all in a language he could understand but could never learn to speak, its syllables guttural and growling, its grammar patterns difficult to grasp. 

“Shadow?”

He opened his eyes. Directly above him, the brightest stars pierced through the light pollution from the city. Slowly, he drew his gaze away from them and towards the pool’s edge. Silver was standing there, playing with the frayed edges of his sweater as he watched Shadow float on his back. It was dark outside, but the pool was lit from below, casting a bluish shade onto Silver’s cream-colored sweater. A chiding—if not worried—timbre crept into his voice as he added, “Shadow, it’s freezing.”

“I know,” Shadow said, his tone resigned, but more than a little defensive. He didn’t make any attempt to leave the water.

Silver sighed, turning to grab a towel off a nearby table. “Rouge said you’d be out here. I know you don’t really get sick, but you should still come inside and warm up.”

Shadow grumbled and adjusted himself so he was treading water instead of floating on his back. Only his head was breaking the surface, and the heated pool made it all too tempting to stay. 

Silver pressed his lips together, clutching the towel to his chest with too-long woolen sleeves. “I thought you might be stubborn about it… I took that fluffy blanket you like and I put it in the dryer. It’ll be nice and warm for you if you come out, sweetie,” he said, his voice inching upwards in an attempt to sound enticing. He smiled, too; that hopeful little grin that brought out his golden eyes. 

As much as Shadow didn’t want to leave the domain he’d made for himself in the water, he didn’t want Silver to worry. He swam to the edge and pulled himself out, shivering as Silver wrapped the towel around him and dried him off. “I can make you some cocoa,” he offered. 

“Don’t like sweets,” Shadow mumbled. 

“Oh, right,” Silver hummed, starting to lead Shadow away from the pool. He proposed something else that Shadow didn’t hear, and he nodded indifferently.

~~~

“Those are really bothering you today, aren’t they?” Rouge teased, her eyes glancing downwards to where Shadow was neurotically rubbing the smooth, golden rings around his wrists. Behind them, Omega was lumbering along, his thick metal arms laden with shopping bags. Shadow simply grunted in response. 

She frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he insisted. He held his arms close to his chest, keeping a hand on one of his rings. 

“Are you upset I didn’t buy you that book you were looking at?” Rouge asked, holding a hand over her mouth as if to stifle a laugh. 

“No.” He sounded far more petulant than he intended. What was he, twelve? 

“Shadow, if you want it, we can go back and get it,” Rouge said with a smile, “Use your words. You’re an adult.”

He sulked, but didn’t actually respond; after all, it wasn’t the book he wanted. Overhead, the sun was beating down on his dark fur. The rings on his wrists and ankles ached like shackles. Every sound only seemed to make his headache worse. Rouge could always tell when something was wrong, but Shadow knew from experience that she wasn’t always the best at following through with helping. He wasn’t sure what exactly was making him so sour, but the terrible mood was as stubborn as he was. 

“SHADOW WANTS TO GO HOME.” Omega said. His voice was grating and loud, but the truth in his words softened them. Shadow nodded in agreement.

“Well, I won’t stop you,” she hummed, “You don’t need to stick around if you don’t want to.”

He’d managed to stop fiddling with the ring. As much as it was bothering him, he didn’t want them to fall off. They were there for a reason, after all.

“I’ll see you later,” he said, but he hesitated before actually breaking away from them. He felt worse without his friends, but at this point going back would just be a hassle. 

~~~

The extinction documentary had managed to draw Shadow’s attention away from his book with its gloomy voice-over. The program, as depressing as it was, gave Shadow some sense of companionship besides the hollow embrace of his blanket. He could forget how lonely he felt and just watch without thinking about anything else. Mostly, the narration was over monochrome photographs or drawings. There wasn’t any footage of these long-dead creatures who seemed so tragically oblivious to their fate.

They only had footage of the endlings: the last living members of a species. He found himself staring at a reddish-brown frog on the screen, its throat thrumming as it breathed. Each breath was futile, borrowed, useless. What reason did they have to keep this creature alive? What could it possibly help but to prolong its loneliness? 

He turned off the television in a fit of rage and found himself staring into his own reflection instead. He could hear every breath he took, feel it in his lungs, watch his shoulders rise and fall. His mind was empty, the silence left in its wake deafening. The edges of his eyes stung with tears. 

Genetically engineered to be perfect, to never fall ill and to never falter. Like a cat in a poisonous box; a quantum quandary, simultaneously too dangerous to keep alive and too valuable to destroy. The only remaining member of the Black Arms, and even then, only half so. Perhaps not even that; had he ever truly felt the same since the hivemind fell silent?

Unable to look at his reflection any longer, Shadow turned his head and found himself staring out the window. In the city, the lights from the street drowned out most stars. But he could still see the brightest ones glistening around the moon. If he ran far enough, he might see the rest.

Shadow rose to his feet and walked out of the condo, carefully shutting the door behind him. He brought nothing but his shoes and himself, wandering through the halls and down the stairs until he stepped out into the street. 

“WHERE ARE YOU GOING?”

Shadow didn’t bother to look at Omega. The bot tended to hang around the condos when he didn’t have anything else he’d rather be doing. Shadow didn’t stop, but he figured he at least owed his friend some kind of answer.

“Home.”

He meandered through the streets and beyond, long after buildings turned to rolling hills. Aside from grass and wheatfields, vegetation here was sparse. He slowed, coming to a stop at the top of a small hill. Grass brushed against his ankles, disturbed by a gentle breeze. Overhead, the stars were clear and bright. He took the time to gaze up at them, tracing the lines that made up his favorite constellations. The first few years of his life, he had looked down upon the green planet below and wondered what it was like to live there. Now, here we was, ready to return to the cosmos. 

The rings around his ankles slid off easily. He took them off in quick succession, without much thought and before the pain set in. Shadow’s cries were muffled through clenched teeth. He stayed upright, and his body held together as golden light radiated off of him. It was only two rings, after all; nothing he hadn’t done before. His hand shot up and gripped at his wrist before he could think any better of it, twisting the ring off in a single swift motion.

Pain tore through his wrist as the ring slid away. The cloth on his gloves tore open as the light became brighter. The skin on his paws began to break apart, the spaces filling in with green blood. He couldn’t hold back his scream-- he was more surprised than anything else, but the pain wasn’t doing him any favors. As the slow disintegration spread down his arm, into his shoulder, he gripped the last ring around his other wrist. The blood made his grip slick, but the ring slipped off all the same.

Shadow let out an agonized yell, his knees buckling under him as he collapsed into the grass. It burned underneath him, the raw energy pouring out of him searing it black. He tried to stand up again, but his limbs shook so much he could only lift himself up a little off his back. The skin on his hands had nearly all burned away, leaving jade muscle in its wake.

“Shadow—!”

He looked up sharply. Sonic was standing there, frozen in shock, framed in his golden glow. 

“Go away!” Shadow choked, but Sonic was already closing in, his paws reaching out and resting on his cheeks. He could feel Sonic’s blood running down his cheeks, he could see his teeth clench as he tried not to cry out.

“C’mon, stay with me, babe,” he said, his voice a little grittier. Shadow heard more voices from the darkness around him. The words were indistinct, but he knew who they belonged to. One of Sonic’s hands lifted from his cheek, and as Shadow felt a ring clasp back around his wrist, Sonic’s hand closed around his. 

Shadow let out a strangled breath, his body convulsing as the energy started to recede back into him. “Shh, shh,” he heard Silver hush in a panicked tone, felt his hands slide another ring back onto his wrist, “It’s okay, sweetie. We’re here. We’re all here.”

Two more pairs of hands--one cold and steely, the other flesh and trimmed nails--slid the rings back onto his ankles. Shadow could only lie there as the light faded, quivering as he clearly saw them all huddled around him; Rouge, Omega, Silver and Sonic. He was bleeding, his body ravaged by the energy tearing its way out of him. But he could see that they each had burnt themselves trying to bring him back down to earth. 

~~~

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Sonic asked. Silver looked up at him as well.

“...For hurting you.”

Shadow had healed quickly from the incident, but he was reminded constantly of the damage he’d wrought. Omega had to get his hands replaced. Rouge had to get her nails redone and put big bandaids on her palms. Even now, Sonic and Silver’s hands were both still wrapped in gauze while Shadow only had a few bandaids where the deeper wounds had been. Sonic even had a big gauze square taped to his cheek where he’d been burned particularly bad.

“Oh,” Sonic uttered, leaning a little on him, “It’s whatever. Just… don’t do that again.”

Silver hummed, nuzzling up against him. “Yeah. What happened, anyway?”

“I took my inhibitor rings off,” Shadow answered. Sonic snorted.

“I meant leading up to that to make you want to do it in the first place,” Silver said, his voice quieter.

Shadow let out a breath, his hands closing around theirs. “...I forgot what I had. I took it for granted and nearly threw it all away,” he murmured as he leaned over to kiss Silver’s forehead, “I won’t do it again. I promise.”

Silver made a sound, somewhere between a whine and a hum, but he didn’t say anything else. Shadow felt their hands squeeze a bit at his, and his thumb caressed them where gauze gave way to fur. For once, the silence didn’t bother him. He closed his eyes, and was content.


End file.
